“I’m Sorry I Was Wrong” About PS VR2

Former Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida is “sorry” for being “wrong” about PS VR2, though described his work on the original headset as “the most fun I had”.

Shuhei Yoshida is a Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) veteran. He led the third party licensing program for the original PlayStation from just before its launch in 1993. In 2000 he became a Vice President of the company’s Worldwide Studios (today PlayStation Studios) division, and in 2008 was promoted to President, where he stayed until 2019, leading the division through most of the PS3 and PS4 eras. He then moved on to a new role supporting external developers, until retiring from the company on Wednesday, ending a tenure of more than 30 years.

On Thursday, Yoshida appeared on the Kinda Funny Gamescast for a two hour interview, his first since retiring from Sony. Near the end of the interview, the host Greg Miller asked Yoshida the direct question: “What happened with PS VR2, Shu?”, prompting his “Let’s move on” reply.

Clip from Kinda Funny Gamescast.

Shuhei Yoshida:
“PS VR was the most fun I had, personally.”

Greg Miller:
“Why?”

Shuhei Yoshida:
“Well, you know, that’s another one of collaboration between the game team and hardware team. It was Santa Monica Studios, you know, the God War team in PS3 days, they customized the PS3 God War, and they put PS Move on to the video viewer, and created a headset, you know, a VR headset. And they put me [in the headset]. I was Kratos. That really amazed me. So it led to the idea: the PS4 generation, we can do proper VR. So that idea came from the studio side and the hardware team loved [it] as well. And I was one of the internal leads as an executive lead with the other head and myself leading the project internally, and I got to announce the project at GDC.”

Greg Miller:
“I remember that. I still talk about that all the time. Whenever we talk about VR, you coming on the GDC show and talking about ‘look, this is, we are at PlayStation 1 again, we are starting from scratch’.”

Shuhei Yoshida:
“I’m sorry I was wrong – PS VR2 didn’t become PS2.”

Greg Miller:
“What happened with PS VR2, Shu?”

Shuhei Yoshida:
“Uh, well…. let’s move on.”

Shortly after, Miller asked Yoshida what words PlayStation VR2 brought to mind, as he had been asking him about other PlayStation hardware. Here’s how Yoshida responded to that:

Shuhei Yoshida:
“Two games. I super, super love, Synapse, and Before Your Eyes. These are two amazing, amazing games I want everyone to try if you have a PS VR2. I remember that especially Before Your Eyes hit you too, right?”

Greg Miller:
“Oh yeah, I was sobbing!”

Shuhei Yoshida:
“Me too. You know, I had tears in my eyes playing games only twice in my life. The first time was Journey, and the second time was Before Your Eyes. It’s an amazing, amazing story.”

Greg Miller:
“Totally, yeah, 100%.”

PlayStation VR2 released just over three years after Yoshida stepped down from his role as the President of SIE’s Worldwide Studios, so it’s possible he simply didn’t want to comment on the work of his successor. However, his comment apologizing for “being wrong” suggests he believes the headset’s market reception failed to meet his expectations.

PlayStation VR2 Pricing & Content Issues

While Sony delivered strong launch content with AAA titles like Horizon Call Of The Mountain, Gran Turismo 7, and Resident Evil Village, the company has failed to deliver anything like this since. Almost two years in, the only new first-party game Sony released (bar My First Gran Turismo) was Firewall Ultra, which was received so poorly it led to the studio’s closure.

A few weeks after the headset’s first anniversary Sony shut down the developer of original PSVR blockbuster Blood & Truth and laid off employees in the studios behind Horizon Call Of The Mountain. Soon after, Bloomberg reported Sony was pausing PSVR 2 headset production to clear a backlog of unsold units.

Still, PlayStation VR2 has seen a steady stream of the top indie VR titles ported from Quest and SteamVR, and has recently benefited from the launch of AAA cross-platform VR titles. Metro Awakening launched in November, followed by Skydance’s Behemoth and Alien: Rogue Incursion in December, a strong season for the platform.

Arguably the main issue with PS VR2 though has been its pricing. At $550 the headset is markedly more expensive than the original, more so than even the PS5 console needed to run it. In the price sensitive console market, with the PS5 itself already considered a significant expense, this has severely limited its appeal. In contrast, the original PlayStation VR saw sales surge when holiday discounts brought it to as low as $200 at times.

Over the summer Sony cut the price of the headset to $350 for one week, and this reportedly caused sales to skyrocket, with one retailer apparently selling more PSVR 2 headsets on the first day than the entire year beforehand. Sony repeated this $350 sale for the last six weeks of the year, the holiday season, this time with Horizon Call Of The Mountain included. Multiple developers have told UploadVR they’ve seen a noticeable uptick in PS VR2 sales in this time.

But PlayStation VR2 is back to $550 now, and Sony still hasn’t announced any new first-party AAA titles. With the headset’s second year anniversary coming up next month, we’ll be paying close attention to any indication of Sony’s future plans for the platform and consumer VR in general.

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